Track Business Expenses with iSpend

Finally, there's an app to keep track of business expenses. Often, it is difficult to keep track of expenses on business trips, especially for small businesses. Maybe you don't have time to record and file each transaction you make, maybe you're in a situation where it would be impersonal to do so. Whatever the reason, at the end of the trip you have to organize all your loose receipts at the end of the trip to try to determine your costs. It's almost always a headache because of the difficulties of recording and examining every transaction.

iSpend will solve all your expense tracking needs. Recording a transaction literally takes seconds and you can even take a photo of the receipt if necessary. At the end of the trip, you will have all your expenses organized by time and date of input. It will even condense your expenses into a report that you can export directly to any web browser.

Because no exceptional organizational skills or effort are required to use this app, no longer will you have to worry about being reimbursed properly for expenses incurred on business trips. You can then focus more time and effort on the more important things. You'll be surprised at how much more productive your trips can be when you don't have to waste your time on frivolous expense tracking.

Read reviews and learn more about iSpend at Apple's official site. Don't go on another trip without it!

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Cooking With Your iPad

When you're working long hours and then coming home to cook at night, you probably don't have time to copy down recipes. I know, there have been many times I've found a recipe online and lugged my laptop into the kitchen to work from being careful not spill anything on it. Apparently I'm not alone and now iPad owners can turn their new gadgets into virtual cookbooks with a couple of new apps. The New York Times recently took a look at some of those apps and they chose two that stood out above the rest.

First of all, the Times' Test Kitchen says the iPad is so much easier to cook from than your laptop and or cell phone and in the beginning it offered, at least ten cooking apps, with more being added weekly. But the app they chose as the best one is BigOven Pro. The BigOven Pro app is free for iPhone but you have to pay $9.99 to get it on your iPad. The 170,000 recipes are a group effort, entered by the app's 800,000 registered users. The second runner up to BigOven Pro is Epicurious, which features over 28,000 recipes from Conde Nast publications such as Gourmet and Bon Appetit. Epicurious is free.

So how do the two compare? The two apps have lots of similarities. Both apps offer duplicates of the same dishes with slight variations, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who you ask. If you put your iPad in a horizontal position, the search and navigation controls on both apps move to the left side. With both you can email recipes or compile a grocery list based on the recipes you choose.

According to the New York Times, BigOven's grocery list feature is easier to use. In addition, its Use Up Leftovers feature is another cool thing to take advantage of. You can take three ingredients from your fridge or cabinets and type them in to get a list of recipes you can create with them. As the Times points out, this is especially great when your brain is fried from work and you're not in the mood to get creative with recipes. Big Oven also has a nice, if not always helpful glossary.

Another cool feature of BigOven is What's Cooking Around Me? It shows you the recipes people in your geographic area are cooking. The New York Times calls it "strange" and "creepy" but I think it sounds kind of neat and like a great way to find recipes you may not find otherwise. Then again, do you really need to know if your neighbor is making spaghetti that night?

Epicurious is said to be better for "those who like to browse" and of course if you don't want to dish out the $10 for BigOven, Epicurious is free. But hands down, BigOven is considered the better option due to all of its extra features.

Read more about the two apps at the New York Times.

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Grow a Garden With Your iPhone

With spring in full force, and summer just around the corner, many people are looking for things to do outside of the office. One great idea that's not only fun, but can be very economical and burns calories, is growing your own garden. But if you're anything like me, your thumbs aren't exactly green. Never fear, if you have an iPhone, these ten apps, as picked by ABC News, can help you plant, grow, and harvest your very own garden.

1. Landscaper's Companion (Price: $9.99) If you're looking for tons of information, this is the app for you. This encyclopedia-type app features over 1,400 plants from 16 categories such as shrubs, annuals, and house plants, and has nearly 6,000 photos.

2. Fruit Garden ($1.99) If you're growing fruit, this is a great app! It explains harvesting, tips and tricks, soil preparation, planting, and recommended varieties of 22 different fruits.

3. iGarden USA ($4.99) This app allows you to pick your zone and harvest fruits and vegetables based on it. Simply select your seed an it'll show you which days to harvest, planting depth, space between rows, and the best temperatures for germination. It even suggests insecticides to keep pests off your plants.

4. Bugs & Insects ($0.99) With over 900 pests in its database, this app is great for determining who is eating or visiting your plants. You can even create a "favorite" bugs list. Though "favorite" may not be the right work here.

5. Botany Buddy ($5.99) Here you'll find information on over 1,300 trees and shrubs. You'll get very detailed information and share your collections with other gardeners through their website. This app is normally $9.99, but for a limited time, you can get it cheaper.

6. Botanical Interests ($5.99) With this app, you'll get advice on 287 different kinds of vegetables. Who knew there 26 types of lettuce or 20 different types of tomatoes?

7. Herbs+ ($1.99) This app is great for herb gardeners and offers information on 25 different varieties, including how to plant it, how to cook with it, and even how to use it for health purposes.

8. Garden Pilot ($2.99) This app features over 14,000 different plants and covers everything from diseases to fertilizers, chemicals, and organic gardening. It also shows you which plants you can purchase from your local retailer.

For more information and more gardening apps, check out abcnews.go.com.

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The BookLover iPhone App for Book Lovers

If you love to read, you probably squeeze it anytime you can. On your lunch break, during your commute, and when you're waiting for an appointment. But summer is just around the corner and that means vacation time, or for book lovers, even more time to read. If you've been too busy to keep up with new books or old titles you ran across and thought sounded good, you're in luck. There's now, as they say, an app for that.

The new iPhone app, appropriate named "BookLover," will help you build your own personal reading list. You can keep track of books you want to read, make notes on them, and even share your lists with others. If you already know what books you want to read, add them to your virtual bookshelf by simply typing in the title. The shelves show your books by cover picture.

Once you've set up your bookshelf, you can create categories for your books, such as genre, book type, and even books you want to read and books you want to give to someone else. Simply drag and drop your book covers into any category you want.

You can also touch any book in your collection to add notes. Maybe a friend told you the book is on sale at Borders, just pull out your iPhone and make a note of it so you'll have the information handy for later. You can even share those notes via iPhone email or Facebook.

The app could have more features but it's cute with its little bookshelves and its inexpensive. You can purchase BookLover at the iTunes store for $0.99.

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The Sound ID 510 Blutooth Headset

A reviewer at CNET calls the Sound ID 510 Blutooth Headset a "truly excellent Bluetooth headset for iPhone owners." So, what makes it so great? For starters, the headset comes with its own customized iPhone app, which allows you to adjust the quality of your sound among other cool features. As for the headset, itself, it has three microphones, which is great for canceling out noise, it's got a green mode for those who are looking to be environmentally-friendly, and it even offers multiple ear fittings so that you can find the right one for your personal comfort. These features, alone, make this $130 headset one of the best you can buy for your iPhone.

Size-wise, it's small and light-weight. The headset is 2.1 inches long, 0.6 inches wide, and 0.3 inches thick. The reviewer at CNET compares it to a stick of gum. You can purchase either a black or white model and it comes in a hard plastic cover. It's very plain, according to CNET, but appealing all the same. The tiny multifunction button is easy to reach by feeling for it, and it's located on the front surface. Use the rest of the front surface as a touch sensor volume control.

The left side features the power toggle, which makes power conservation a breeze, and on top, you'll find the charger jack. The back has the earpiece, inside a Sound ID Real comfort ear loop, which, according to CNET fits snugly on your ear. Despite the fact that it comes with optional ear hook, wearing it is not necessary. It's said to be comfortable and even offers three different sizes so you may choose which one is the most comfortable.

The accompanying app is called EarPrint. it's free at the iTunes store but it only works this version of the headset. So, what does the app do? It allows you to measure how loud your surrounding sound is by decibels. It also acts as a personal audio equalizers in Personal Sound Mode. Personal Sound is a grid interface that lets you tap your finger to adjust the volume and ton of the audio. The Tools section lets you go back and forth between the in-call status indicator, a noise reduction demo, and Environmental mode, which lets you listen to surrounding noise. And even that can be set on Surround Sound or Focused Sound. Another tool, called Find My Headset, allows you to do just what the name says. Simply tap the locator button and a lost or misplaced headset will sound an alarm to help you find it. You can also check the headset's battery life via the app.

The headset's other features are pretty generic: ending, answering, rejecting, last-number redial, and transferring call capabilities. According to CNET's reviewer, the Sound ID 510's outgoing call quality is excellent and callers could hear the speakers clearly. Battery life for the headset is 5 hours of talk time or 5.62 days.

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New Google Chrome Web App Store

Earlier this week, Google announced the Chrome Store at the I/O conference, and shared some details about what to expect. The app store will be Google's own place for you to buy web applications or just download free ones.

According to PC World, the Chrome Web Store will open later this year (before the Chrome operating system ships) and will only sever users of Google Chrome (about 70 million), at first. Developers must follow the developer's guide and only use technology that will work with Chromium Apps.

A few of the apps were unveiled at the I/O conference. According to PC World, these included Google's own Docs, Calendar, Mail, News, Maps, Picasa and Wave. Insiders assume those types of apps will be free, while apps from magazines, games, news and other utilities will have to be paid for (supposedly about $3 or $4). The free apps will appear when you open a new tab in Chrome, as well as a link to the app store.

Gizmodo has some pictures of what is currently being offered. This includes: Pandora, Lego Star Wars, Plants vs. Zombies, Digg, Sports Illustrated, Who has the Biggest Brian, Tweetdeck, NPR, Zoho, LinkedIn, Bejeweled 2, Scrabble, FIFA World Cup 2010, Darkroom, and Poker Rivals. The apps are said to be impressive and high-quality. As a matter of fact, Engadget describes the apps as better than "most anything we've seen on the iPad thus far."

The Chrome apps will be developed with existing open source coding such as native HTML code C and C++, and in the future with coding such as WebM. It is also expected to be a lot less restrictive than the Apple App Store. Some say the future may hold Android apps which can be synced between computers and mobile phones and the store may even cause people to abandoned other browsers, in favor of Chrome.

But some don't see such a bright future. CNET has questioned whether or not there is a difference between visiting a website and having an app for that website. Others feel that Chrome as a whole will essentially be a big flop. Even so Steve Jobs and Apple are feeling the threat and are already on defense. Jobs has been taking shots at Google's products lately (most recently, Android) and will probably do the same with Chrome.

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The Official iPhone Twitter App

If you noticed Tweetie 2 missing from the Apple App store yesterday, you weren't just seeing things. The app has been replaced by the new, official iPhone app for Twitter. The uniquely named app is called, well, "Twitter." Twitter actually bought Tweetie about a month ago, from creator Loren Brichter, and it looks like they basically added their own brand to it. The new app is being called "version 3.0."

According to CNN, aside from being absolutely free, the new app is basically the same as the old version of Tweetie, with no "big update" or "iPad support." Tweetie has been a popular app for iPhone users but if you were looking for big improvements, you might want to stick with what you have.

New features include viewing people's Twitter pages without having your own account, as well as signing up for a new account with the app. Once you do sign up, the app generates a suggested user list for you. "Top Tweets" have been added to search results and the "More" tab is a little different, with more popular options being moved to the main bar.

According to CNN, many developers worried about the future of their own applications when Twitter purchased Tweetie. Twitter, in turn, said they needed to have an official client. The company has been increasing its presence in the mobile world, in an effort to improve the user experience. The company's user-base has grown overwhelmingly lately and third party apps can often be confusing.

Twitter for Android was released in early May, as was the Twitter app for Blackberry, released by Research in Motion. iPhone, Android, and Blackberry make up the majority of the smartphone market, so now, no one has an excuse not to use Twitter...on the go!!

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